Thank you very much for writing this guide. I have one remeaining question mark though. According to the guide Sacred Shield and Eternal Flame are both valid options. How ever, most of the people discussing this thread seem to be using Eternal Flame. Is this a pure throughput decision? Not sure about this but I would assume that a 30 second hot mostly ends up as overhealing in most cases.

The difference is that Eternal Flame can be put on everyone in the raid and applies our Mastery to everyone, causing a minor version of the Disc Priest effect when AoE is hitting/hits, where as Sacred Shield comparatively only reduces the damage the tank takes, which the Eternal Flame HoTs (which transfer at full health) ticking through Beacon, do as good as SS or even better

The difference is that Eternal Flame can be put on everyone in the raid and applies our Mastery to everyone, causing a minor version of the Disc Priest effect when AoE is hitting/hits, where as Sacred Shield comparatively only reduces the damage the tank takes, which the Eternal Flame HoTs (which transfer at full health) ticking through Beacon, do as good as SS or even better

if anyone has time i would appreciate if u go though logs of our holy paladin in raids and give me some more insight on what he's doing terribly wrong, because there must be something other then what i'm noticing and that's not using Eternal flame often enough, his rank limits are almost never above 60% or 65% which honestly is not good

Got no idea what happened to the post i wrote 15 min ago, but ill do a quick recap since it got deleted.

His holy shock usage is terrible. He should be looking at the dubble amount. Use it on CD more or less. --> dubble holy power means that he can roll dubble EFs, or stack up alot of holy power for heavy aoe phases.. Light of Dawn -> Holy Radiance -> Holy Shock --> Light of Dawn, etcetc. With more Holy power he will also be so much more mana efficient

Never using Flash heal. Its expensive, but its heals for alot and got fast cast time. Tell him to get som reflexes, healing is about saving people. He has 0 Flash of lights on heal megaera, thats pretty strange, its insane damage going out. Especially if he has full mana at head 6/7 he might aswell spend it. He has the least healing and the most overhealing. Tell him to react faster.

Low damage phases = SPAM holy light, togheter with Holy shock on CD's. He seem to be casting Divine Light and interrupt it if its about to overheal. Not so good as spamming Holy Light. Especially with beacon on tank.

And worst of all, does he even use his cooldowns, Angel, wings and divine favor! huh!?

if anyone has time i would appreciate if u go though logs of our holy paladin in raids and give me some more insight on what he's doing terribly wrong, because there must be something other then what i'm noticing and that's not using Eternal flame often enough, his rank limits are almost never above 60% or 65% which honestly is not good

Holy Avenger isn't weak at all. You just have to know how to use it. I have definitely found myself switching to it on some fights this tier (so far 6/12 25m).

Don't get me wrong, I use it all the time, I'm only arguing against its use by default. On some fights it is VERY good, but on others I get zero use out of it. Let me give you an example - I took HA for Magaera thinking that it'd help with aoe throughput during rampage.. which it would have.. except for the fact that we had real raid cooldowns available anyway and I hardly even needed to heal. You can see HERE if you select Wilferel how even though I'm sure HA was available at that point, I didn't really need to do much healing since we had boomkin tranq available. DP on the other hand would have saved me mana throughout the fight and generally allowed me more overall throughput.

HA has its uses and when its good its GOOD, but I think people shy away from DP when perhaps they shouldn't.

Don't get me wrong, I use it all the time, I'm only arguing against its use by default. On some fights it is VERY good, but on others I get zero use out of it. Let me give you an example - I took HA for Magaera thinking that it'd help with aoe throughput during rampage.. which it would have.. except for the fact that we had real raid cooldowns available anyway and I hardly even needed to heal. You can see HERE if you select Wilferel how even though I'm sure HA was available at that point, I didn't really need to do much healing since we had boomkin tranq available. DP on the other hand would have saved me mana throughout the fight and generally allowed me more overall throughput.

HA has its uses and when its good its GOOD, but I think people shy away from DP when perhaps they shouldn't.

I havn't even touched that tier in talents, i feel like DP is a nobrainer best choise for any fight, apart from just a few were HA might beat it, but HA is too situational, and DP is an awesome mana conservative talent.

- Terrible holy shock usage > no holy power > low healing
- Uses too much Divine light, especially on people without beacon, it can be nice to save someone but spamming it is wrong.
- Terrible CD usage, in both logs i looked at he didn't use Avenging wrath/Divine purpose/Guardian AT ALL even though pretty much all fights now requires some kind of burst healing phase.
- His Eternal flame uptime on the tanks is really bad as well (if he casts them on the tanks at all)
- Doesn't really uses his hand of protec/sac at all either.

Don't get me wrong, I use it all the time, I'm only arguing against its use by default. On some fights it is VERY good, but on others I get zero use out of it. Let me give you an example - I took HA for Magaera thinking that it'd help with aoe throughput during rampage.. which it would have.. except for the fact that we had real raid cooldowns available anyway and I hardly even needed to heal. You can see HERE if you select Wilferel how even though I'm sure HA was available at that point, I didn't really need to do much healing since we had boomkin tranq available. DP on the other hand would have saved me mana throughout the fight and generally allowed me more overall throughput.

HA has its uses and when its good its GOOD, but I think people shy away from DP when perhaps they shouldn't.

I pick up HA for Magaera and find it very useful. I run 25m and we do have the other cooldowns but I still get a ton of healing out. At this point I use HA on almost every fight. Primordius is the only one I can think of right now that I am specific about keeping DP. And I think it is the opposite, people cling to DP/tier 14 EF blanketing playstyle when they really should be considering other talents. There is no "default talent", spec into what you and your raid group needs for the current fight rather than limiting yourself.

I know these are some basic questions, but they're questions I haven't' been able to find answers to yet.

Background: My Paladin has been my Main since I started playing 3 years ago. I started as Ret, but started tanking in Cata, so Prot became my main spec. Tried healing on my pally for a few weeks towards the end of cataclysm, but switched back to ret once Mists came back. Recently became interested in finally learning to heal on my Pally, so I re-specced to Holy as my offspec.

Questions:

1. Eternal Glory & Holy Power Generation- I've read tons of guides and watched a bunch of videos. A lot of Paladins talk about spreading Eternal Glory around. Holy Power generation seems a bit slow, so by the time I have EG on the two tanks and one other raid member, I have to refresh the first tank. Is HP generation supposed to be that slow? Spamming Divine Light and/or Holy Radiance on my Beacon target speeds things up, but it's mana heavy.

2. Beacon of Light - I understand how Beacon works for the most part, but... If I heal my beacon target with Holy Light, does the beaconed target get twice the heal? Or does the "free heal" only come if I heal another target other than the beaconed player?

I know these are some basic questions, but they're questions I haven't' been able to find answers to yet.

Background: My Paladin has been my Main since I started playing 3 years ago. I started as Ret, but started tanking in Cata, so Prot became my main spec. Tried healing on my pally for a few weeks towards the end of cataclysm, but switched back to ret once Mists came back. Recently became interested in finally learning to heal on my Pally, so I re-specced to Holy as my offspec.

Questions:

1. Eternal Glory & Holy Power Generation- I've read tons of guides and watched a bunch of videos. A lot of Paladins talk about spreading Eternal Glory around. Holy Power generation seems a bit slow, so by the time I have EG on the two tanks and one other raid member, I have to refresh the first tank. Is HP generation supposed to be that slow? Spamming Divine Light and/or Holy Radiance on my Beacon target speeds things up, but it's mana heavy.

2. Beacon of Light - I understand how Beacon works for the most part, but... If I heal my beacon target with Holy Light, does the beaconed target get twice the heal? Or does the "free heal" only come if I heal another target other than the beaconed player?

Hi Javster

If you are just gearing up and doing 5 man instances your holy power generation will be dramatically slower than it is in raids because you will rarely use divine light and holy radiance. One way to speed up your hp generation is using crusader strike. Many people recommend not to do it but still, especially in 5 man instances combined with eternal flame I find this a good way to have more poeple covered with your hot, thus providing a lot of heal to the group and your tank thorugh beacon. Using devine purpose as a talent also is strong fro EF blanketing and mana conservation.

Beacon will not copy your direct heals if cast on to the target with the beacon buff. How ever, you should consider that they will apply your mastery. This is not the case with copied healing spells. So when only your Tank is taking damage, it still can be beneficial to spam heal the tank directly in stead of healing someone else in order to profit from your mastery. This is especially true fro divine light and flash of light which will also generate 1 hp and heal the tank for more because beacon only transfers 50% of those heals.

If you are just gearing up and doing 5 man instances your holy power generation will be dramatically slower than it is in raids because you will rarely use divine light and holy radiance. One way to speed up your hp generation is using crusader strike. Many people recommend not to do it but still, especially in 5 man instances combined with eternal flame I find this a good way to have more poeple covered with your hot, thus providing a lot of heal to the group and your tank thorugh beacon. Using devine purpose as a talent also is strong fro EF blanketing and mana conservation.

Beacon will not copy your direct heals if cast on to the target with the beacon buff. How ever, you should consider that they will apply your mastery. This is not the case with copied healing spells. So when only your Tank is taking damage, it still can be beneficial to spam heal the tank directly in stead of healing someone else in order to profit from your mastery. This is especially true fro divine light and flash of light which will also generate 1 hp and heal the tank for more because beacon only transfers 50% of those heals.

I strongly advise against CS for HP generation. It was somewhat viable with the pvp 4p due to the significant efficiency boost on EF. Especially on steady damage fights like garalon it was useful.

@Javster - You're probably assuming you have to EF with 3HP - there's actually nothing wrong with using 1 or 2HP EFs.

Hello fellow Paladins i have got a few questions i would like to ask since i switched to fulltime healing in our guild and got a kind of special case in our setup so that doing it the "normal way" (ef blanketing with mastery built) feels a bit fruitless.

I am healing with two disc priests in 3 heal encounter (yeah lucky me) and so a huge portion of ef is going into shields so we sat together and thought about a few ways to increase our synergies.

Question: Would it make sense to forget about ef and specc into ss in order to let the discs handle most of the raiddmg via atonement and me handle spike dmg (heavy dmg on a few players f.e. tanks or debuff targets) and therefore switch from my mastery heavy gear to a more haste leaning one to really be the more responsive healer in our setup to counter spike dmg ? Is it a valid option?

Tbh with two disc priests you're probably better completely moving away from shields and mastery. If I was the third healer with two disc priests I'd probably do a full haste reforge and play with LoD rather than EF (which will mean you'll just chuck your SS on the tank). They have the shieding and pre-empting of damage covered. You're better being the reactive healer.

Hello fellow Paladins i have got a few questions i would like to ask since i switched to fulltime healing in our guild and got a kind of special case in our setup so that doing it the "normal way" (ef blanketing with mastery built) feels a bit fruitless.

I am healing with two disc priests in 3 heal encounter (yeah lucky me) and so a huge portion of ef is going into shields so we sat together and thought about a few ways to increase our synergies.

Question: Would it make sense to forget about ef and specc into ss in order to let the discs handle most of the raiddmg via atonement and me handle spike dmg (heavy dmg on a few players f.e. tanks or debuff targets) and therefore switch from my mastery heavy gear to a more haste leaning one to really be the more responsive healer in our setup to counter spike dmg ? Is it a valid option?

I play with a disc and have a disc and have a few points to make -

No other healer will match atonement healing for reaction to spike damage (assuming they're spamming atonement-generating abilities basically at all times, which they usually do) because atonement's healing target is determined after the damage is dealt, meaning that you couldnt possibly get a cast-time heal off before atonement heals that person. Not to say you cant do triage healing (its my preferred style as well) but its not like you're going to be beating a disc to the punch.

ef 'blanketing' is a gimmick (one which has its fair share of uses, but still a gimmick). If you heal with ef normally (use it for real heals not overheal & shields) you'll be perfectly fine in a group with disc healers.

SS is probably fine on some fights, but really doesn't shield for that much and the delay after swapping makes it really annoying to optimize.

If you think you're doing a fine job but the disc priests are stealing your heals, then the fight is too easy to 3 heal. A fight that strains the requirements of all 3 healers will see them doing a fairly similar amount of healing if they're similarly skilled.

Track their spirit shells (and PWS) on your raid frames and it'll be a lot easier to not waste your mana healing people who don't need it.

I realize this is very late, but I have updated the original guide to cover the main changes for 5.2. There weren't too many, and I apologize for the updates being made so late.

I'm not currently raiding (or even playing actively for that matter), but I will do my best to keep this guide updated with the basic information. I very much appreciate the raiders who answer questions for people as I am no longer capable of answering raid related questions.